Thursday, March 10, 2016

Imperial Meddling


Our meddling and regime changing is not just confined to the Middle East.  Charles Pierce reminds us that we have a long history of serious meddling with our nearest neighbors.

And where might they have gotten the idea to resist our powerful virtue? (But of course, it was always for their own good; it was never a smash and grab of land, resources, or cheap labor, never; and shame on you for thinking otherwise!).

They didn't have to get any ideas from Marx or Lenin or Castro.  They could have read this passage from a speech uttered on the floor of the US House:

Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable—a most sacred right—a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, and make their own, of so much of the territory as they inhabit. More than this, a majority of any portion of such people may revolutionize, putting down a minority, intermingled with, or near about them, who may oppose their movement. Such a minority was precisely the case of the Tories of our own revolution. It is a quality of revolutions not to go by old lines, or old laws; but to break up both, and make new ones.

And who said this?  Just some backwoods politician named Abe Lincoln.



1 comment:

Leonard said...

That puts truth back on square one...meanwhile, the greed-savages are beating down the door with the hope of exploiting, insisting and demanding MORE is GOOD and BETTER/BEST... it's not about democratic integrity, it's about the fear of losing what they think they MUST HAVE! Thank you, cleared my head this a.m.. Len